


Never (Ever) Let Them Go

by sicparvis87



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Depression, F/M, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), The Turtle (IT) CAN Help Us, we love ALL the losers in this house
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22058377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sicparvis87/pseuds/sicparvis87
Summary: After weeks of nightmares and depression, Richie comes to the conclusion that the only way he's going to be able to begin to move on from Eddie's death is by fixing his final regret. Of course, he can't be expected to fix it alone. Losers stick together.__aka The Losers head back to Derry to retrieve Eddie's body and have several heart-to-hearts along the way.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31





	Never (Ever) Let Them Go

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, hello! OK, first and foremost this IS a fix-it. It does start from the end of Chapter 2 where certain people are a bit dead but we have a friendly cosmic turtle who can help with that, I promise. We WILL be getting the band back together at the end of this journey. I hope people will stick it out! Comments are loved and cherished, and definitely motivating.
> 
> (Also, sorry for posting this on NYE and it not being remotely NYE-y, I've just been determined to finish this chapter before the year's out.)

He couldn’t bring himself to go to the funeral.

Bev sent him the details she’d gotten from the wife – widow, _fuck_ – but he’d just stared at them and left her on read before falling back asleep in the clothes he’d been wearing for two days straight.

It had been three weeks since they’d left Derry. Richie got on a plane to LA the following day, feeling like he hadn’t slept in about a week but unable – or unwilling – to even try at the same time. He’d called his manager to cancel the rest of his tour. Couldn’t even come up with a good excuse which was ironic considering he had a perfectly valid one right there for the taking. Somehow he just couldn’t make the words _my best friend was murdered in front of me and died in my arms before I could admit I was in love with him_ come out so instead he went with _I just don’t feel all that funny right now_ and hung up during the tirade that followed.

Eddie’s luggage sat in the corner of his apartment. He knew he shouldn’t have brought it with him. Paid through the nose to get it added to his ticket for the flight back. It should have gone back to Manhattan, back to his- back with all his other belongings. But Richie couldn’t bear to part with it. All the stupidly neat folds, the Tetris-like blocks of clothes to allow optimal space conservation. He’d packed as if he were going to be away for a month, not a few days. He’d packed as if there would be an After.

Richie wished he hadn’t brought them back.

The first two weeks, he’d done nothing. He’d barely left his apartment, getting food delivered when he could be bothered to eat at all. He’d tried drinking himself to sleep the first couple of nights but as it turned out, alcohol only seemed to make the nightmares worse. Two nights in a row he woke in a cold sweat, visions of blood and Pennywise and Eddie swimming behind his eyes, practically propelling him out of the bed and to the floor of the bathroom where he spent the rest of the night crying into the toilet bowl.

Back after round one with the clown, Richie had also had nightmares. They all had. Bill’s were the worst, Richie knew. He’d call Stan or Mike in the middle of the night, barely able to get the words out through the tears and the stutter. But they’d listen, regardless. Richie… Richie didn’t like to talk about it. Any time nightmares were brought up, he’d brush it off with a joke, just like he did with anything that hit too close to a raw nerve. Didn’t want anyone looking too close or digging too deep.He was predictable like that. Too predictable. And so one night, he got a phone call from Eddie, telling him he’d had a nightmare and would it be OK if they just talked for a bit. Never doing anything by halves when it came to Eddie, Richie ended up cycling over to his house instead, crawling through his bedroom window, and spent the night talking to him about anything other than nightmares or clowns or their fears.

It became a semi-frequent occurrence over those six months following their confrontation with It. On Richie’s particularly bad nights, he’d head over to Eddie’s under the guise of making sure _he_ was OK and Eddie never questioned it or teased him about it. Just let him sprawl on his bed or on the floor and help himself to his stack of comics. It was how they’d always functioned.

All Richie had wanted to do since arriving back in LA was call Eddie.

On the fourth day, he caved.

_“You’ve reached Edward Kaspbrak. I’m not available at the moment, but if you’d like to leave a message, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can!”_

Richie clenched his eyes shut during the spiel, flinched at the beep, breathed shakily through the silence. There was so much he wanted to say. So much he should have said. The words still got stuck in his throat, choking him. A message that would never be heard, on a phone probably soaked in greywater at the bottom of a cistern on the other side of the country and he still couldn’t get the fucking words out.

The phone ended up launched against the bedroom wall on that particular occasion, Richie suddenly furious at his cowardice. The anger was at least a refreshing change from the bottomless pit of misery.

He continued to call the number every day. The words never came but at least hearing his voice was something. Right up until it wasn’t.

_“We’re sorry but the number you have dialled has been disconnected.”_

Richie had risked the nightmares that day, downing an entire half bottle of whiskey before crawling into his too-big bathtub in his too-big bathroom, trying not to drown in his too-big emotions.

His phone would ping endlessly with messages from his manager, his agent, each of the Losers. He didn’t pay any mind to the first two but the rest always left him with guilt simmering low in his stomach. He knew he was worrying them. Shit, he was worrying himself. But it was a distant kind of worry, almost second hand. Like ‘oh, I should probably be concerned about this’ but lacking the motivation to go beyond that thought.

During week three, his manager arrived with a box of fanmail from her office, thinking it might cheer him up. Her expression at the state of him – alongside the barely whispered ‘holy shit’ as he opened the door – told him everything he needed to know about what kind of condition he was in and that it would probably take more than a box of adulation to fix. But before she could get her brain back into gear, he’d already grabbed the box, told her ‘not now’ and slammed the door back in her face. He’d apologise later. Maybe.

Fanmail felt like the last thing he wanted to be dealing with. It always made him feel like a fraud, getting praise for things he didn’t write. And somehow he really wasn’t feeling up to reading how much he made people laugh when the only person he’d ever truly wanted to make laugh was dead.

His fingers absently ran across the envelopes, stamps from all over the world covering their surface. Just as he was about to hide the box in a closet, one envelope caught his eyes, the name in the top left forcing a lump into his throat.

Patricia Uris.

Abandoning the box on the kitchen counter, Richie traipsed into the bedroom, sitting on the edge of his bed as he opened the envelope with shaking fingers. He didn’t recognise the handwriting but why the fuck would he? He recognised the voice though. Could hear it clear as day. Not as it would have been now. Or…earlier. But when they were younger. Bill had always been the de facto leader with his brave speeches and pep talks, but man, did Stan have a way of punching you in the face/heart/dick with his words when needed. Seemed like that hadn’t changed in the last 27 years.

Richie couldn’t make it through the whole letter on the first attempt. The tears and the tremble in his hand making it damned near impossible to focus on the words. He wondered if the others had received theirs yet. Figured if he bothered to check any of his messages, he’d already have the answer. But he still couldn’t face them, not yet. He didn’t want to say anything he couldn’t take back.

Eventually, he made it to the end. Then he read it again.

And again.

The more he read it, the angrier he got, the same part tripping him up over and over again.

_And if you find someone worth holding on to, never ever let them go._

Never _ever_ let them go.

_Never EVER._

They’d just left him down there. All alone in the dark. The one place he hated more than any other. Hadn’t even tried. They could have _tried._ Ben and Mike practically had to drag Richie out of the cistern as it was. Surely they could have fucking _tried._

Richie thought of an empty coffin being lowered into the ground. His own wife not knowing where to find a body, where to even begin looking. He’d been classified missing, presumed dead.

_I don’t want to go missing, either._

Richie choked back a wet sob at the memory. He remembered thinking _I’d never let that happen. Not to any of us, but definitely not to you_. Just one more broken promise to add to the growing pile. Just one more fucking regret.

The letter festered in his mind. The words taunting when they should have been comforting. Later that night, he finally checked his messages which was when he saw the funeral date from Bev. Two days time, Manhattan. They were all going. They hoped to see him there but understood if he wouldn’t (couldn’t). They missed him. They hoped he was doing OK.

He wasn’t.

But for the first time since coming back, he thought that maybe there was something he could do to set him on the right track.

The following day, he booked a flight, packed a suitcase with a couple of weeks’ worth of clothes (85% his own) and drove to LAX.

The day after that, he got a phone call as he was walking down the high street.

Swallowing at the caller ID, he answered. “Finally got tired of the silent treatment, huh?”

 _“Rich!”_ came Ben’s surprised voice. Presumably, he hadn’t been expecting Richie to pick up. Fair. _“How, uh. How have you…been?”_

Ben clearly knew it was a loaded question, probably already had a reasonable idea of the answer too. Richie still wasn’t in the mood for a heart-to-heart but figured he’d meet him halfway, at least. “Sure as shit been better. It’s uh. Been a rough couple of weeks. Not proud of it. Sorry for ignoring you all.”

 _“It’s OK, Richie. We get it. It’s good – shhhh, stop –“_ he cut himself off as the chatter around him began to escalate. Presumably the other Losers trying to muscle in on the conversation. God, he missed them. _“It’s good to hear from you.”_

Richie cleared his throat, trying to make sure the following words came out as steady as possible. “How was it?”

A pause. More background chatter. _“It was…weird,”_ he conceded _. “I dunno, it was uncomfortable, I guess. Didn’t really feel like we belonged there.”_

Richie scowled at the sidewalk. It made sense, of course. They weren’t part of ‘Edward Kaspbrak’s life. No one there would have known them. Wouldn’t even have heard of them except for maybe as a half-remembered anecdote told over a glass of wine. They were nobodies. But they were also his family. They had more right to be there than _anyone_. Richie had never been more grateful for his decision not to go.

“That’s such bullshit,” he muttered, falling silent as the town hall clock chimed out across the high street before continuing in a quieter tone. “I’m glad you guys went, at least. Eddie…he would have-“

_“Rich.”_

Ben’s interruption caught him off guard, almost making him trip in his slow stride. “Huh?”

_“Richie, where are you?”_

The question and the tone in which Ben asked it made Richie stop altogether. “What?” he asked, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.

_“Where are you?”_

“What do you mean? I’m home, I’m in LA.”

“Then why did that bell just chime four?” Richie blinked owlishly at the town hall clock, sputtering through a non-answer. On the other end of the line, he could hear Ben grow more adamant in his shushing, followed by the sound of him moving and a door closing. In a more hushed, urgent tone, he asked, _“Are you here right now? Are you in Manhattan?”_

“No! No, I promise. I’m not in New York.”

_“But you are on the East Coast.”_

Richie sighed, rubbing a hand across his face, knocking his glasses askew. “Yes, fucking Sherlock, I’m on the East Coast.”

 _“OK,”_ Ben said, some of the tension easing out of his voice. _“OK. We know you cancelled your tour. Did you…set something else up?”_

“No, it’s not- This isn’t work. Don’t worry about it.”

A frustrated laugh travelled down the line, putting Richie more on edge. He’d always hated disappointing Ben. It was like accidentally treading on a puppy. _“I do worry, though. We all do.”_

Richie clenched his eyes shut. He didn’t want to do this. “Yeah, well, it’s nothing just-“

_“You know you can talk to us-“_

“There’s nothing to talk-“

_“-we just want to-“_

“I’m getting him out!” Richie yelled at his phone, ignoring the stares of a passing couple. The silence on the other end of the line had Richie glancing at the screen to make sure the call was still connected.

_“You’re…what?”_

“You wanna know where I am? I’m standing in front of the fucking general store in Derry, Maine. I’m about to invest in a shovel, a hard hard, maybe a pair of those elbow length glove things. And I’m not leaving here until I’ve dug my way back into that fucking cistern and dragged him back out like I should have done the first time.”

Ben let out a shaky breath. _“Rich…”_

The tone cracked him apart. He needed to sit down before he fell down. Instead he just propped himself up against a nearby wall, knocking his head against the brick. “You can’t talk me out of it. I won’t let you.” _Not again_ , he didn’t say but from the sharp inhale on the other end, he thought Ben heard it anyway.

The anger at Ben and Mike for dragging him out of Neibolt had dulled to a simmer pretty quickly. He couldn’t blame them. He could have fought them harder. Probably should have. But occasionally it would consume him, that betrayal. The knowledge that – god forbid – it had been Bev down there, Ben would have fought them tooth and nail to get her out. It ate away at him. But the anger inevitably became a drop in the ocean that was his own guilt. It’s hard to stay angry at someone for not respecting your feelings when you’ve never actually _expressed_ said feelings to anyone, after all. Thus, the cycle of self-loathing began anew. It had been a fun few weeks.

“I need to do this,” Richie said, trying to soften his tone. “I think I _have_ to. I’m not gonna stop thinking about it, otherwise. I just need him out of there.” A longer sigh. Richie could practically see Ben rubbing a hand across his face in anguish. God, Richie was so sick of making everyone worry. He was probably more responsible for grey hairs than genetics and old age combined. “Just let me do this, Ben. Please.” An unconvinced silence. Time to break out the big guns. Sincerity. “I don’t feel in control of anything right now, man. I’m so fucking tired of it. But this is something I know I can fix. He shouldn’t be alone down there, I can make it right. I fucking owe him that much.”

“Rich-“

“So ya’ll travel safe, ya here!” he said, barrelling straight into a Voice the way he always did the moment he’d let people get a peek behind the curtain. “Don’t worry ‘bout your ol’ pal Richie. He’s got it all figured out!”

One more sigh for the road, resigned this time. “Just…make sure you respond to the group chat. Bev keeps yelling at me.”

Richie gave an honest laugh at that, tears stinging his eyes at the thought of his friends and how much he had been letting them down. “On my honour, sir,” he said, even offering a bow despite the fact Ben wouldn’t see it.

“Take care of yourself.” It sounded like an order rather than a sign-off.

“When don’t I?” Richie offered, self-deprecation clear in his voice.

Hanging up, he let out a shaky breath, closing his eyes as he remained leaning against the wall, trying to regulate his breathing. After a few moments of ‘in for 4, hold for 7, out for 8’ breathing exercises, he realised it was the same technique Eddie had taught him in high school for when he got particularly bad panic attacks and needed someone (aka Richie) to help calm him down.

“Fuck this,” Richie muttered, pushing himself off the wall and headed into the general store.

He got the shovel, the hard hat, those glove things that go up to the elbows. Some weird pickaxe thing that didn’t look much like a pickaxe at all but could be useful, maybe? He started to realise that, in true Richie fashion, perhaps he had been a little gung-ho and didn’t actually know much about digging through many, _many_ layers of rubble in the hopes of uncovering a buried demon clown lair that he’d sworn never to return to.

Maybe Google would have something.

Emotionally spent from the conversation with Ben, Richie decided to be sensible for once in his life and head back to the Inn instead of starting his mission immediately. He dumped his newly purchased bounty on the floor, re-read Stan’s letter for the umpteenth time, Googled ‘how to safely dig through a collapsed structure’ (results less than useful) and poured himself a glass of whiskey which he left untouched on the bedside table before taking a nap at five in the evening.

At 2am he woke himself up, tears staining the pillow, sob falling from his lips. Not a nightmare this time. Not the visions of Eddie above him, his blood spraying across his glasses. No, it was one of the more harrowing ones. The Deadlights dream. Nightmares of a different kind.

They’d started a few days after he’d arrived back in LA. Until then, he hadn’t given a single thought to what he’d seen in the Deadlights. One night his subconscious decided to remind him. So thoughtful. They left him more rattled and unsettled than the regular nightmares, left him with an incurable ache in his chest. A desperate longing the likes of which he’d never experienced and yet at the same time felt like he’d been experiencing for the last 27 years.

On more than one occasion, the moon high in the sky and Richie’s hand clenched in the pillow from where he’d just been cry-yelling into it, his thumb had hovered over Beverly’s number in his phone. Despite the late (early) hour, he knew she’d answer. She’d listen and she’d soothe and she’d do what she could to help him. But he was scared. Scared of bringing back memories she wanted – _deserved_ – to forget but mostly just scared of her telling him that no, she didn’t have the dreams anymore. Because where would that leave him then? Would he be stuck with them forever? Seeing those multitudes of possibilities over and over, each of them feeling so real that the memory of the experience clung to him for hours after waking?

He never called.

He fell back into a dreamless sleep.

The following morning saw him dragging his feet out of the room, laden down with his tools, hard hat already balanced on his head. Belatedly, he realised he could probably do with a wheelbarrow. He’d need to move rubble and shit, right?

Tucking the tools under one arm, he whipped out his phone to search for nearby stores that might sell wheelbarrows. Stepping out into the parking lot of the Inn, he almost dropped his phone at the sound of voices ahead of him.

“-else would he be? Not like his folks still live-“

As it was, he just dropped all the tools.

Ben’s head snapped to where Richie stood, eyes wide and body rigid. As if he thought that maybe he wouldn’t be noticed if he stayed perfectly still. Next to Ben, Bev let out a little gasp, aborting an advancing step when Richie flinched. She moved back to the camper van, retrieving a bag from the back before timidly offering him a wave.

Richie’s eyes snapped to the other side of the van where Bill was climbing out of the drivers’ seat, movements slow, so as not to spook him. It was the sight of Mike, unfolding himself from the seat behind, his own bag in hand, that managed to bring Richie back to himself.

“No! No fucking way,” he said, leaving the pile of tools on the floor as he advanced towards them, frantically shaking his head. “Mike, what the fuck.” He pulled up short, leaving what felt like a chasm between them. He’d been doing that a lot lately. Before Mike could respond, Richie turned his ire on Ben. “What the fuck,” he repeated.

Ben at least had the presence of mind to look sheepish, earning a gentle squeeze of his arm from Beverly. However, it was Bill who answered.

“Ben told us what you were planning on doing. We came to help,” he said with a shrug that was probably meant to look more nonchalant than it came across. “‘Cause Losers stick together.”

A multitude of barbed responses sparked in Richie’s mind then but they burnt out just as quickly in the face of his friends who had clearly flown red eye, rented a _camper van_ and were currently all staring at him like they were physically restraining themselves from dogpiling him.

“I’d be dead so many times over if you guys hadn’t come after me all the times I decided to do dumb shit on my own,” Bill continued. “And I’m not losing anyone else to that f-fucking house. We go in together. And we get him out together.”

Richie let out a shaky breath, head jerking in something resembling a nod. But then his eyes caught Mike’s and guilt gripped him once more. “Mikey,” he said, hating how his voice broke immediately. With as subtle a cough as he could manage, he continued, “you should be so fucking far away from here, man. I don’t wanna, like… You shouldn’t- I mean, fuck Derry, right?”

Mike raised an eyebrow, mouth quirking up at the corner. “I’ll admit, I didn’t think I’d be coming back here any time soon,” he said, “but I didn’t hate being in this place all those years because it was Derry. I hated it because I was here without you guys. Getting you all back only to have us all part ways again? Can’t say it was any better. Even if I was finally in Florida.” Bill turned his head to look at Mike, offering him a sad, understanding smile. Apologetic, almost. “Which, by the way,” he continued, “totally overrated.”

Richie’s mouth quirked up at that.

“So, yeah. If it’s alright with you, think I’ll stick around,” he finished, smiling a little wider as he shouldered his duffle bag. Richie wanted to crush him in a hug.

“Fucking sap,” he said instead, hoping the distance between them was enough for them not to notice the rogue tear slip out. God, he fucking loved them so much. “I don’t have enough shit,” he added, frowning at his supplies-for-one still laying in a pile on the floor.

“We can fix that,” Bill said, slapping Mike’s arm, signalling for him to get back into the van. “There was a h-hardware store off the highway.”

Mike threw Richie his bag which he caught with his face, knocking his glasses askew. “Look for a wheelbarrow!” Richie yelled at Bill who was already starting the engine whilst Ben removed the rest of their bags. “Ooh! And a chainsaw! And one of those drill things you mash into the ground. And some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups-“

“Rich…” Bill said with an exasperated smile.

“Beep beep?”

The smile softened, making Richie’s throat tighten. “Beep beep.”

Richie nodded, a twitch of a smile on his own lips as he smacked the front of the camper van. “I trust you to bring me back something nice,” he said, with a wink, grinning at Bill’s eyeroll.

As Bill and Mike pulled out of the parking lot, Ben and Beverly finally closed the distance between them, bags in hand.

Ben coughed. “I know you said not to worry but-“

Richie was already waving him off. “Forget it, man. I know the second that call ended this one would have been interrogating you,” he said, pointing at Beverly who had the audacity to scoff.

“Well-“

“He’d barely even gotten out of the room before he said ‘Richie’s in Derry, he’s going back into Neibolt, we’ve gotta go right now’.”

Ben’s eyes slid across to Richie before shooting a half-hearted glare at Beverly who just kissed him on the cheek. Then Richie leaned across and planted an exaggerated ‘mwah’ of a kiss on his other cheek, both him and Beverly snickering as Ben flushed a fetching shade of crimson.

“You got a good one here, Miss Marsh,” Richie said, nudging Ben with his shoulder. “Even if he can’t keep his mouth shut.”

“Trust me, it’s not a bad trait to have in certain situations-“

“Oh my _god_ ,” Ben spluttered as he snatched up the bags, clutching them to his chest as he practically fled into the Inn to the sounds of Richie and Beverly cackling behind him.

With the two of them standing alone in the parking lot, Richie suddenly felt more exposed than he had in weeks. Possibly even years. There were few people who could see right through to his core like Beverly Marsh.

“Hi,” he said, watching warily as her eyes scanned his face.

“Hey,” she said, before adding, “idiot.”

“Guess I deserve that.”

“You have no idea,” she said but there was no accusation in her tone. She looked relieved, if anything. And then she was pulling him down into a gentle hug, arms wrapped around his shoulders, so similar to the hug outside the Jade of the Orient. Only this time without the bruises across her arms and the undercurrent of fear simmering in his gut. He squeezed her tighter.

As she pulled back, discreetly wiping away a tear, she plucked the hard hat from his head, placing it on her own. Standing to attention, hands behind her back, she said, “So, what’s the plan, cap’n?”

With a crooked grin, Richie started to think that maybe he’d made a good decision for the first time in longer than he could remember. Maybe he _could_ finally start healing.

“It’s all gonna depend on if Bill comes through with those Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups…”

**Author's Note:**

> So, just an FYI, I have a general outline for this fic. Each of the following chapters is going to be like a heart-to-heart scenario with one Loser at a time to help Richie (and themselves) through this incredibly shitty time. Naturally, with Stan and Eddie being dead, they won’t be appearing for a while BUT there will be flashbacks so we’ll have them in their mini capacities. Tags and (possibly) rating will be updated with each chapter.


End file.
